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Pachad Yitzchak

Pachad Yitzchak

1679 CE–1756 CE · Acharonim · Ferrara

R. Yitzchak Hezekiah Lampronti (1679-1756) was the leading Italian-Sephardic halachist of the 18th century and a physician by training. Born in Ferrara and educated at the University of Padua medical faculty, he served as a community rabbi and physician in Ferrara for over four decades.

His magnum opus Pachad Yitzchak is the first comprehensive Hebrew-language halachic encyclopedia — 13 large folio volumes organized alphabetically by topic, citing every relevant Talmudic, rishonic, and acharonic source on each subject. Completed and published over a century after his death (final volumes appeared in 1888), it remains an indispensable reference work, especially for Italian-Sephardic halachic minhag.

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Stop 1 of 11679–1756Born, Rabbi, Physician, Encyclopedist

FerraraפרארהItaly

What they did here

Born in Ferrara. Earned a medical degree at Padua. Served as community rabbi and physician in Ferrara for over four decades; composed the vast Pachad Yitzchak encyclopedia here over a working lifetime. Died in Ferrara 1756.

About Ferrara

Ferrara, a city in Emilia-Romagna, northern Italy, was ruled by the Este family from the thirteenth century until 1598, when it passed to the Papal States; its Renaissance centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In 1438 it hosted the opening sessions of the council that later moved to Florence and sought union between the Latin and Greek churches, and it was the birthplace of the friar Girolamo Savonarola. Its Jewish community has a continuous history since the Middle Ages: the Ladino Ferrara Bible was printed here in 1553, a ghetto was imposed in 1627, and in the eighteenth century Rabbi Isaac Lampronti compiled the Talmudic encyclopedia Pachad Yitzchak in the city.

Across the traditions, in Ferrara at the same time

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In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with Pachad Yitzchak’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.

Across the traditions

Works

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